Imagine playing basketball in a cold western Michigan gym in the height of winter. No heater, bundled in parkas and hats.

Now pretend that's fun and you have the essence of Tulane's newest senior administrator, Barbara Burke.

"We would practice in the winter in what was an older gym and they wouldn't turn the heat on because they were trying to save money over Christmas break," Burke said of her college playing days at Western Michigan. "I can remember we would have sweats and sweatshirts on, and in between drills, we would put gloves on and then our hands would get so dry from the winter. I can remember my fingers splitting from the balls. We laugh about it now. That was the time."

Fast-forward quite a few years and Burke's new surroundings are equally stark. Burke's office on the third floor of Tulane still didn't have many personal effects.

All of that was in transit from Illinois, where she served as the Eastern Illinois athletic director for the past six years. The walls were bare, the view outside the window showed construction fences and freshly poured concrete for the new on-campus football stadium.

Burke, a petite woman with wispy blonde hair and an intent gaze, has done more absorbing the surroundings and rhythms around her than making her mark so far in the university's newly created position of deputy athletic director/chief operating officer.

"There are so many opportunities for us to grow the program here from a staffing standpoint; we might be lean so we have to learn how to work smart and really prioritize our tasks and what's important to us and what do we need to get done first. And those are kind of the things that I'm trying to evaluate right now and organizationally, how do we function and can we be more efficient?

"Here's the thing I would say-- It is all about perspective," Burke said. "So for me, we might be a little lean but we do have a pretty strong staff. I think there are a lot of good people here who really care about the program and more importantly have a passion for Tulane athletics and our student-athletes and I think that's really critical moving forward."

"So what my role is going to be – at least a bit of it – is kind of to evaluate, where are we with staffing? How do we compare with our counterparts in the American Athletic Conference? It's going to take us some time to figure out, how do we compare with staffing, administratively, coaching-wise – all of those things."

But Burke wasn't just hired to sit back and observe. She is taking a huge functional role in the department. Serving as athletic director Rick Dickson's new right-hand person, Burke is green-lighted to approve and make operational decisions when Dickson is on the road fundraising and attending meetings – something that has consumed a bulk of the past two years of his tenure.

"All day Mondays that's all I do (meet with staff for updates and to approve plans)," Dickson said. "It's one executive staff meeting after another, coaches' meetings, all these different units and you can't operate that way. It's not that they can't reach me. The way things are today, they can email or text you, but it shouldn't have to be that way where everything is tied back to me. So [it's important to have] somebody in here that knows, that has the experience and competence to handle operations while we continue to try to grow resources."

Dickson will continue to hit the fundraising trail to seal up finances on Yulman Stadium, the 30,000-capacity, on-campus football stadium that should be ready for Sept. 6's home opener against Georgia Tech.

With Dickson and other administrators on the road, Burke will handle the day-to-day operations of the department.

Burke's post is just one of many additions expected for the athletic program as it moves toward joining the American Athletic Conference in July. The step up from Conference USA has required major restructuring and more than a little soul-searching, as well as money to get aligned with the athletic staffs of the new league.

"We started to get our legs under us the last couple of years and compete again like we had seven, eight, nine years before," Dickson said. "But we've got to restart that, and the quicker that we can shorten the gap and not start so far behind everybody and get ourselves in a position where we have comparable resources with who we will be competing with ... then you can have expectations to compete on a similar level. It doesn't matter where you are, what group, what conference or anything else if you are so far away from the pack in terms of how you operate. You can't have expectations [to compete at the same level]."

Most of the American Athletic Conference schools have around 10 senior athletic administrators.

"We were down four associate ADs and we have assistants and directors under that level," Dickson said.

When Dickson arrived at Tulane nearly 14 years ago, his staff was bloated on the higher levels of the department.

"We were probably, for a program this scope and size, a little top-heavy," he said. "We had maybe eight or nine associate ADs and 100 staff members and that was a little disproportionate for me. So we streamlined it. At the time I was coming in here with 13 or 14 years of AD experience that I would help bridge the gap when at that time we were trying to get the expenses and things under control so one of the areas I felt like we could do that was, look, I've been in it a long time so I'll bridge the gap if we downsize our administrative staff. So we operated that way."

But the university has committed to upgrading the department to fall in line with other schools in the new league.

"Now it's time to ramp up and a big part of it is because Tulane is stepping it up. And where we are going, we have to step up in the way we are operating. That doesn't mean it's all going to be at the top end, but we certainly are moving up."

Burke is an integral piece in that process.

Traveling preacher's daughter

Burke is the daughter of a Baptist preacher. She and her siblings rarely got a chance to dig into new surroundings before the call of the ministry would relocate the family to another city, another state, another school.

The experience took away her fear diving into new surroundings while keeping her core values intact.

"Gosh, I can't even tell you how many times now or all the different states we moved in. We moved to Michigan when I was a junior in high school and stayed there and then I went and enrolled and went to Western (Michigan) and then my parents actually moved and my dad took another ministry after I was in school but I stayed at Western."

She competed in basketball and softball there, and working her way up from student-athlete to coach and to lower-level athletic department roles all the way up to athletic director makes her unique, friend Mary Drake said.

Drake ran a fundraising group for Eastern Illinois when Burke was there.

"She is a Hall of Famer in basketball and in softball. So she's lived it. She's breathed it. She can really see both sides," Drake said. "She was an athlete, she was a collegiate athlete. She was involved with every aspect with every sport and had the respect of the coaches."

Early on, before having to win the respect of coaches, Burke had to win the blessing of her father to play on Sundays, a sacred day of rest in her religion.

"It was interesting because when I first started off playing, it was ok," Burke said. "When it morphed into something a little more and it got a little more intense and I was doing a lot more, I was actually doing some traveling on the weekends and we have the Sunday issue with church and everything and then I remember my dad coming to see me play. We got home and he was like, 'Okay you can keep doing this.' And that was kind of cool."

Burke, to this day, tries to slow down on Sundays and keep the workload light to honor the traditions. It's easy with no husband or kids or pets to immerse herself completely in work, but Burke tries to manage that.

"Sunday mornings, I try to shut down technology," she said. "It's easier to do that when the student-athletes aren't on campus but that's how I've had tried to change personally is to put technology down and go for a walk and listen to music. Because I think we all need that. It can't be all work and I've learned how to work smarter so that I'm not in the office until 9, 10 at night -- because you could. You absolutely could. But I don't think that means you are doing more or doing better."

Burke has learned to maximize her time in the office and recharge when she is away – making for a more productive workday and an ability to deal with frustrations with an even keel.

That was one of the first things Drake realized about Burke.

"She is such a thorough thinker. Not judgmental," Burke said. "But thinking it out. She didn't ever react. I was very impressed that in situations that she didn't overact, she was just ok, let's think of options."

Burke worked her way up the Wyoming athletic administration department in 10 very formative years. There she learned not just how to hire people, but how to fire bad fits for the programs, how to make critical decisions, and when to make them to benefit the department as a whole.

The current position builds off all those experiences.

"There are a lot of other decisions that can be made on a day-to-day basis that we can keep the program moving forward and keep it trending upward," Burke said. "There are other things (Dickson) doesn't really need to deal with on a day-to-day basis. That is truly one of the reasons why I'm here."

It helps she is used the buck stopping at her desk -- something she hopes can help the school grow to the next conference in July.

"I've seen it from the chair of being an athletic director so hopefully I understand even better now why some decisions are made and why decisions aren't made," Burke said. "So I think I can help the staff navigate through the processes and the systems to help us accomplish as a program and under Rick's leadership and I think we'll have the opportunity to do some really good things."